urban design
Designing the Myrtle Ave Pedestrian Plaza
Friday night I braved the cold to attend the opening reception for “Designing the Myrtle Avenue Pedestrian Plaza – Pop Up Exhibition and Workshop,” sponsored by the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership and the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn BID. The event brought together neighborhood residents, business owners, committee leaders, and…
Active Design Guidelines: A new definition for sustainable cities
There’s a new, bright green poster that will be making an appearance around the city in the near future, encouraging people to take the stairs and ”Burn Calories, not Electricity.” In addition to reducing our carbon footprints, the city is offering us another way to help the environment and to help ourselves…
Field Trip: Bryant Park Lightwalk next Tuesday
Who doesn't love a field trip? I know, I know, the arctic winds of late make urban exploration less of a priority. But the post-holiday winter cityscape offers some singular opportunities to check out what makes this city what it is. Our friends at WNYC Culture have invited the Omnibus to share some field trip…
Fulton Street Revitalization Plan
Fulton Street in the Financial District is undergoing a $38 million multi-phased revitalization, intended to transform the street into the Fulton Street Corridor, the essential link between the World Trade Center site and the East River. Improvements to Fulton Street include a replacement of the 150-year-old water main, renovated sidewalks and signs, and…
Arrested Development Recap

If economic troubles haven’t already prompted us to reassess current development trends, a panel that assembled November 7 at Cooper Union’s Great Hall certainly could. That’s the hope, at least, for Olympia Kazi, Executive Director of the Institute for Urban

Private/Public: Rethinking Design for the Homeless
Deborah Grossberg Katz and Terri Chiao explore how small-scale design can address broader social issues through their research on the systemic cycle of homelessness in the city.
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Let’s go on a lightwalk – next Tuesday!
Here on Urban Omnibus, we are all about urban exploration, maps and interdisciplinary approaches to examining and designing our physical, urban environment. Leni Schwendinger is a designer and artist who works with light to combine all three, always asking the crucial, and often unasked, question: what happens to this environment after…
Making Public Places:
Building an Urban Living Room
Diana Balmori shares a flexible and inexpensive design scheme - complete with public engagement a la Twitter - to create street furniture and plantings that reimagine the public space of Gansevoort Plaza.
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Making Public Places: Twitter Forum
Before Balmori Associates began to develop the the design scheme detailed here, they first opened up the question of what a public space should be. Designers from the studio joined 40 Dutch urban design students and their teachers for a lively conversation that engaged the opinions of people around the neighborhood and the…
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A Walk with Bob Yaro
Regional Plan Association President Bob Yaro reflects on the transformation of Midtown West, focusing on three pivotal sites: Penn Station, Hudson Yards, and the Javits Center.
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